After reading the Postal Service’s July 1 Industry Alert (“USPS to Implement Second Phase of Service Standard Refinements on July 1”) it’s clear that the agency’s PR writers have again shown their singular ability to spin anything the USPS does into a great benefit for its customers.
Accordingly, we’re proposing that an award be developed that can be given out as needed – such as every time the postal spinmeisters issue another laughably transparent statement about how decreasing service is a “refinement.”
In its Industry Alert, the Postal Service crowed:
“The US Postal Service will implement the next phase in its service standard refinements on July 1, part of the organization’s ongoing efforts to better serve customers nationwide. Service standards indicate the expected number of days for delivery after a mail piece is accepted by USPS. In March, USPS announced service standard refinements to be implemented in two phases: April 1 and July 1. The changes will support the organization’s operational improvements and are estimated to save the Postal Service at least $36 billion during the next decade through reductions in transportation, mail and package processing, and real estate costs. …
“Service standard refinements previously announced on April 1 included:
• Adding one day to the service standard for USPS Ground Advantage, single-piece First-Class Mail and Periodicals originating in a 5-digit ZIP Code that is more than 50 miles from the nearest regional processing and distribution center.
• New critical entry times for commercial mail acceptance, with no change to the service standard for presort First-Class Mail.
• Arrival time by 8pm at regional processing and distribution centers for collection mail and packages originating in offices within 50 miles.
• Sundays and holidays no longer counted in service performance measurement when accepted on the day prior to Sunday or a holiday.”
The July 1 announcement wasn’t the first that the USPS has issued about changes to service standards or service measurement, nor is it the first of the type that would deserve the award.
For years, the agency – implementing former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s 10-Year Plan – has been reducing transportation, eliminating collections, and insourcing mail processing by diminishing the value of worksharing. At the same time, its new network design includes – aside from more plant-to-plant trucking – the assignment to some processing hubs of the additional task of cross-docking mail and consolidating loads to serve DeJoy’s objective of full trucks.
The impact on service – especially for First-Class Mail and Periodicals – has been stunning; the added handling and loss of air transportation shows in the numbers. Meanwhile, for Marketing Mail, often drop-shipped by mailers close to destination to bypass the maze of postal processing and “full trucks,” service for the class has suffered less.
Concurrently, to legitimize its claims for service performance, the Postal Service has simply redefined the applicable standards and added convenient exceptions and conditions about when and how service is measured. By moving the goalposts – more than once – the USPS has sought (and, notably, still failed) to achieve the lower targets it’s set for itself to meet the relaxed standards.
Despite this, as if the mailing industry can’t read the reported numbers, the Postal Service continues to make dizzyingly spun statements about its service and its actions related to moving mail.
For example, calling the addition of a “day zero” to how service performance is measured a “refinement … to better serve customers” is absurd – yet they make such declarations unabashedly. Most people would expect a “refinement” to be more than a glibly self-serving assertion but, conversely, something that actually improves an outcome. Aside from making real improvements in service performance, incoming PMG David Steiner would be well advised to counsel his publicists: if you’re going to make a statement, don’t say something every reader will know to be … award-winning. Ratepayers will know good service when they get it.